Freelance Writing and Research

If there is one thing I’ve learned in the years since I became a freelance writer, it’s that most of your clients employ you in the hope that your writing will improve their business and help them to make more money.  So what sort of things could you be doing to help your clients make more money?

1: Your Client’s Interests are Your Interests

It is all too easy for a busy freelance writer to forget that anything that is in their client’s interest, is also in their own interest. Whether you write copy, content, articles, blogs or all of these for various clients, write as you would for yourself. You should always provide the very best work that you can for clients as they are more likely to offer you further work or to recommend you to their friends.

When you work for a client bear in mind that helping your client to make money and to market and improve their business you are also working in your own interest. If your clients are not prospering then they may not be able to afford your services.

2: Bringing Benefits

Whenever you make a proposal to a client start by talking about their business (because of course you’ve done your research). Tell them how good things look and what you can offer to make things even better.  Concentrate on the benefits that you can bring to the client, e.g. I can help you improve your sales with a bespoke email marketing and article marketing  campaign, or let me improve your search engine ranking with blogs and articles that bring you some great back links.

3: Giving Value

Giving value does not mean under pricing your services, but it may mean going that extra mile occasionally. When a client knows that if their back is up against the wall on a project and they can call on you to do your best to help, you’re giving added value to that client.

Your main purpose as a writer is to offer the kind of services that will improve your client’s business and their income, as this will, eventually, improve your own.

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If there’s one thing that I’ve discovered since I started freelancing, it’s that you’re never too old to learn, and you can learn from anyone. Older people (like me) often find it hard to accept that someone a lot younger can teach them something. My own experience has shown me that we never stop learning until we die and that we can learn from anyone, whether they are 3 or 103. It’s not always true that wisdom comes with age, some of the wisest things I’ve heard come from the youngest people. You may wonder what I’m rattling on about here, well the truth is that this evening I clicked on a link that led me to the website of a 17 year old Nigerian boy, and have I learned a few things.

It’s Not Just What You Know but What You Do with it

Knowledge is great, and as a freelance writer I learn something new most days, if only from researching my work for clients. One of the great things about the blogging and freelancing world is that there are scores if not hundreds of people out there who are willing to share what they’ve learned with everyone who’ll listen or read. Most writers are not just interested in promoting their own career, but in helping others to do the same. It’s taken me a long time to really understand guest blog posting, outside of getting links back to your site that is. The best thing about guest blogging I’ve discovered, is that it helps to build a stronger writing community, No matter what country you live in or what your circumstances, you can become more involved in that community through activities like guest posting.

The greatest thing about knowledge, and especially new knowledge, is its application, what you do with what you’ve learned. I’ve learned a lot more about the caring sharing nature of may freelance writers today, something which I was losing sight of due to things that have happened to me in recent years. Knowledge that’s kept to oneself is not really knowledge at all because it’s only useful when it’s shared and passed on.  In order to learn, freelance writers must also be readers.

Reading the Writing of Others

Writers are generally readers first but sometimes it is all too easy to get caught up with work and the minutae of life, and then we forget to read the work of others. If you want to be a writer and if you love writing, then you should first be a reader. In reading the work of other writers, whether that is a novel,  a self-help manual or a blog post, we learn to write for different audiences.  No matter what your age or your station in life you should always make time to learn. If you like this post then please leave me a comment – if you want a guest blogger then leave me a message. Keep learning.

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Like many freelance writers I have times when there is more work coming in than I can handle, and others when I’m back to searching for new clients. Over the years I have developed relationships with several regular clients, but it’s the spaces in-between I sometimes need to fill. Sites that I avoid as a general rule are Get a Freelancer and similar sites that offer ludicrous rates, i.e. a dollar or two for five hundred word articles.

Directories, Referrals, and the Creative Industries

I have had quite a bit of work through referrals and occasionally you can pick up a client who is willing to pay a reasonable rate at places like Digital Point and other webmaster and domain seller forums. Getting yourself listed in a directory of freelancers is also good, I’ve had a couple of quite lucrative jobs that way. An often forgotten but good source for freelance writers is the creative industries. Companies that offer branding and website services often have difficulty in getting their clients to write the necessary content for the sites, so they are worth canvassing. I work for one such company on a regular basis. Most cities will have an online directory of the creative industries in their area and it’s well worth sending out a few queries to this type of company.

Social Media

Sites like Twitter and Linked In can be a source of the occasional writing job,  depending on whether you can write copy as well as content. As someone who does both types of writing, there really is a difference between content writing and copywriting.. People who undertake social media marketing for their clients are often asked if they can write articles and blogs, some of them just don’t have either the time or the inclination to do this, which makes social media marketers another place to look.

The Economy

The economy has not only hit the employed, it has also hit the self-employed, which means that a writer has to be resourceful if they want to continue working when the economy is on its knees.

Freelancers are often so caught up with client deadlines that their own writing gets neglected. Most of us have pieces of writing that can be repurposed and some of it made into Ebooks that could then be offered for sale. The one thing that you must learn to do if you are to succeed as a freelancer, whether you are a writer or something else, is to be resourceful and imaginative. Where are you looking for work in the current economic climate?

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No I don’t assume that most freelancers are writing about sex or telling rude jokes when they are writing, when I talk about clean writing or copy, I mean that without errors. One of the problems for many freelancers, particularly if they are overloaded, is that they forget to edit properly.

Proof Read Your Writing

Most clients are not happy when you send them articles or web copy that contains spelling and grammar mistakes. Writing is a craft as much as a talent and part of that craft involves editing all the silly mistakes that most of us make from time to time. If  you want to keep your clients coming back for more then proof read what you have written and fix any errors before you send work off to a client.

Give Yourself a Break

Life gets hectic don’t it. You need to sit back from time to time and give yourself room to breathe. Writers who don’t allow themselves some downtime face burnout and their work suffers. Pace yourself when you have a busy day. If you think that trying to write ten or more articles in one day means that you won’t have time to proof read them, then you need to extend your turn around times. It is much better to tell a client up front that if they want ten properly researched, written and edited articles, then they are going to have to wait two or three days to get them.

One of the reasons that we writers fail to give ourselves time to breathe is that we have feast or famine constantly at the back of our minds. If you write well and provide clean copy for your clients, they will actually appreciate the extra time that you have taken on their project. When you take some time out during the day just to relax for a bit, you end up a happier person. Happy people are more likely to produce work that keeps their clients coming back for more than tired out and miserable ones.

Give yourself a break from writing during the day and you will come back to your work with a fresh eye. Overtired writers are far more inclined to miss typos and grammar errors than those who are feeling more relaxed about their work. Remember, keeping your writing clean makes clients keen and that means that your bank account benefits.

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In any freelance writer’s life there are times when work appears to be thin on the ground and your finances are stretched. Like everything else in the current economic climate, while there is work about, you do get people who want something for virtually nothing. Some of the job sites are not helpful in that they allow people to post projects for which they want to pay slave wages and expect professional standards. Don’t be so desperate for writing work that you commit to writing 400 words for a dollar. So what can you do during a down time or to avoid too much down time altogether? Below are the tactics that I have used when work has been thin on the ground.

Finding Work

There are a number of ways that freelance writers can avoid too much freelancing down time, make marketing your services a regular part of your working week. If you don’t get out there and sell your services nobody is going to do it for you. If you work well and consistently you could end up with a couple of long term clients that keep coming back to you for their writing requirements.

Join sites such as Linked in, as people can find you and view your profile, I’ve certainly had a couple of referrals from there. Get yourself listed in a freelancers’ directory, this one has landed me a couple of long term clients with whom I am still working. There are some clients out there willing to pay a reasonable rate for your services, but they have to know you are there.

Work on Your Website

There are all kinds of things that we can do as freelance writers that can help us find more clients. If you have some spare time then spend it working on your website, post content that is informative and entertaining, you never know who is reading and it could land you a writing job.

Networking

While it is not advisable to spend too much time on Twitter and Facebook, these are places where you can meet other writers.  I have always found that in general, writers are good to other writers, and many of them will outsource work if they are over loaded, but they have to get to know you first.

If you have organised your freelance writing day, then during down times you should stick to your schedule and spend that time doing whatever you can to attract business. Sign up for Demand Studios if you are accepted you don’t have to put all your energy into working for them. Once you have written the prescribed pieces of work to pass the test, it’s a good place to go in down time. If you can write two articles in an hour then $30 is a lot better than nothing for an hour’s work. Don’t be put off by the nay sayers, freelancing down time can be scary if you are not used to it, content mills may not be your’s or my favourite places, but there are times when they help to fill the gap.

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